http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. To Charles Darwin it was an 'abominable mystery' and it is a question which has continued to vex evolutionists to this day: when did flowering plants evolve and how did they come to dominate plant life on earth? Today a study in Ecology Letters reveals the evolutionary trigger which led to early flowering plants gaining a major competitive advantage over rival species, leading to their subsequent boom and abundance. http://www.physorg.com/news178887468.html Biology Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:58:49 EST news178887468 (PhysOrg.com) -- Charles Darwin and many other scientists have long been puzzled by the evolution of orchids, the largest and most diverse family of flowering plants on Earth. Now genetic sequencing is giving scientists insights into how these plants could evolve so quickly. http://www.physorg.com/news177838192.html Biology Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:32:40 EST news177838192 Approximately 120-130 million years ago, one of the most significant events in the history of the Earth occurred: the first flowering plants, or angiosperms, arose. In the late 1800s, Darwin referred to their development as an "abominable mystery." To this day, scientists are still challenged by this "mystery" of how angiosperms originated, rapidly diversified, and rose to dominance. http://www.physorg.com/news172148720.html Biology Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:20:01 EST news172148720 The appearance of many species of flowering plants on Earth, and especially their relatively rapid dissemination during the Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) can be attributed to their capacity to transform the world to their own needs. In an article in Ecology Letters, Wageningen (The Netherlands) ecologists Frank Berendse and Marten Scheffer postulate that flowering plants changed the conditions during the Cretaceous period to suit themselves. The researchers have consequently provided an entirely new explanation for what Charles Darwin considered to be one of the greatest mysteries with which he was confronted. http://www.physorg.com/news166805247.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:49:18 EST news166805247 (PhysOrg.com) -- As flowering plants like giant trees quickly rose to dominate plant communities during the Cretaceous period, the ferns that had preceded them hardly saw it as a disappointment. http://www.physorg.com/news165749781.html Biology Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:37:01 EST news165749781 (PhysOrg.com) -- Charles Darwin described the sudden origin of flowering plants about 130 million years ago as an abominable mystery, one that scientists have yet to solve. http://www.physorg.com/news161886558.html Biology Mon, 18 May 2009 17:29:58 EST news161886558 (PhysOrg.com) -- Flowers that want to cheat pollinators by not paying them for their services shouldn`t try to lure them in using floral scents, scientists at Newcastle University have shown. http://www.physorg.com/news159027037.html Biology Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:16:46 EST news159027037 Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into plant sex - and discovered that a particular gene switches on 'the essence of male'. http://www.physorg.com/news156760544.html Biology Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:36:19 EST news156760544 A new University of Florida study based on DNA analysis from living flowering plants shows that the ancestors of most modern trees diversified extremely rapidly 90 million years ago, ultimately leading to the formation of forests that supported similar evolutionary bursts in animals and other plants. http://www.physorg.com/news153422711.html Other Sciences Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:26:42 EST news153422711 An enigma - unique to flowering plants - has been solved by researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and POSTECH, South Korea. The discovery is reported in the journal Nature on 23 October 2008. http://www.physorg.com/news143899812.html Biology Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:10:12 EST news143899812 What began with an off-the-cuff curiosity eventually led Joe Williams to hang from the limbs of a tree 80 feet above the soil of northeastern Australia. http://www.physorg.com/news136483600.html Biology Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:06:40 EST news136483600 (PhysOrg.com) -- It has long been debated whether dinosaurs were part of the ‘Terrestrial Revolution` that occurred some 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous when birds, mammals, flowering plants, insects and reptiles all underwent a rapid expansion. http://www.physorg.com/news136038148.html Biology Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:22:28 EST news136038148